Jean Paul Gaultier / Spring 2012 RTW

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Jean Paul Gaultier was in antic mood with a presentation that was campy even by his convention bending standards.

To set the scene, he put his backstage center stage, building three tiers of stadium scaffold so that the audience could see the pandemonium of the girls being dressed. In lieu of a music soundtrack, he co-opted a French television self-styled “weather girl” to introduce the models and the names of their respective ensembles. Thus announced, the girls (each carrying little cards bearing the number of their outfit, in Old World couture style, with Guido Palau’s elaborate victory roll hairdos to match) struck exaggerated attitudes for both the crowd and photographer Miles Aldridge, working in a studio on the runway; the resulting pictures will be used for Gaultier’s upcoming campaign.

Gaultier revisited many of his icons—reworking the trench, the matelot sweater, corsetry, and tattoos—in playful if not quite groundbreaking ways.

Classic mens’ striped cotton shirts were deconstructed to transform into draped bodices that bared a shoulder or gathered into a front-jutting peplum. The trench was reimagined in liquid jersey or stiff faille, sometimes with the epaulettes, collars, and pockets in rough-textured leather.

Sailor pants were worn partially unbuttoned to reveal frothy broderie anglaise bloomers beneath, and those tattoo prints climbed up stocking legs and across translucent face-powder colored singlets (to emphasize the point, one or two of the models had been chosen for their own elaborate tattoos). The horseshoe rings used for body piercings were wittily displayed as fastenings, and a print that suggested an artist’s messy palette was used for ensembles titled “I Spoiled Everything,” and “I Spoiled Everything Again” (other droll names included “Excuse My Trench” and the bride’s “Yes, I Do Not”).

Cirtus-hued evening gowns in liquid jersey reinforced the forties femme fatale mood of the collection, although the structured lingerie in which the cabine of models took their finale walk transformed the catwalk into a house of ill-repute out of Jean Genet’s world.